


Dappled Light

by ErrantNight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24550771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErrantNight/pseuds/ErrantNight
Summary: Fourteen year old Asajj was rescued from Dooku but the damage has been done and the un-doing is going to be hard.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Dappled Light

They were all talking over her. 

She was so tired, so very very tired, that none of it even penetrated the fog in her brain to be discernible words. Their tone was concern, however, and pity, and she hated that. She didn’t need their pity, didn’t deserve it even, which was worse. She picked out one word before she lost the fight against unconsciousness. 

Dooku.

When she woke the second time she felt sick, hot, much too hot, and dismayingly weak. It was dim in the room, the only light from the soft glow of illuminated strips along the top of the walls and the machines surrounding her bed. She was so thirsty, and wondered if she could get up and try to find someone, anyone, if she could pull the needle and it’s accompanying tube out of her arm. That hurt, and she gave it all up when she realized her wrists and ankles were bound to the bed with soft padded cuffs.

She drifted for a few moments, the room spinning around her until someone came in wearing white robes with a blue sash and blue tattoos across his cheeks came in. He said something, she was sure of it, but it was all a blur. At least he brought water. She sucked it all down through the straw he offered her, the cool liquid settling her stomach and the heat receded somewhat. He fiddled with the machine by her bed, swapping out whatever it was that was dripping down the tube into her arm. The dizziness turned a bit more pleasant and she fell asleep again. 

It was slightly less terrible to wake up the next time. She wasn’t too hot, she didn’t feel sick, she just felt… comfortable. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been comfortable. Well, she could, but it was a while ago and thinking of that hurt somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.

Asajj wondered if she was bad luck. Anyone who took her in died.

o0o

The healer wouldn’t let her get out of bed, so the Jedi council came to her. Not all of them, just the little green one and the tall dark one who looked at her with dislike. Or maybe he just looked at everyone that way, frowning between his eyes and his mouth set in a hard line at all times.

“Feel better, do you?” the green one asked, hopping up to stand on the chair beside her bed to be more at eye level with her. She wasn’t tied down anymore - she’d thought it was so she wouldn’t run away but the healer had explained she’d fallen out of the bed two times while having nightmares and tried to pull her IV out. She didn’t remember that, just that everything hurt and she was sick with something she apparently should have been vaccinated against.

“No,” she said, truthfully, “or… maybe sort of.” 

She wanted to roll over and put her back to them, make them stop looking at her like that.

The tall one slumped slightly and he looked less imposing as he ran a hand over his smooth head. She’d felt her own that morning, bristly with hair growing back in from where he had shaved it off. 

“You aren’t in any trouble,” he said, exhaling air through his nose, “we don’t know what you were told about the Jedi and we want you to know that we only want what is in your best interest.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking.

“I was a Jedi,” she said, finally, and shrugged her shoulders a bit and sunk further into the soft bed, “but my teacher died. Everyone who looks at me twice dies.” 

Her voice was bitter, too much, too many hurts, and she felt a million years old instead of fourteen.

The green one nodded and made a humming sound as he thought, “Kill them, did Dooku?”

“No,” she sighed and turned her face up to stare at the ceiling, “it was pirates. His name was Ky Narec, and he got stuck where I was and he found me after my-” the knot in her chest tightened, “-owner got killed. And he took care of me and then he got killed and then he came and took me away after I killed the one who killed teacher Ky.”

A pained smile twisted her chapped lips, “Ky never made me call him master, he said he knew I’d never like that word and he didn’t want me to have to call him that.” 

They asked more questions, slowly drawing out of her what had happened after that.

Dooku, had taken her onto his ship and been nice to her at first. He’d put her in his own little plush cabin, given her food that tasted better than anything she’d ever had, and then when he couldn’t get her to say she’d liked killing that pirate he’d started to get less nice.

He’d dragged her kicking and screaming through his manor house, completely ignored by the people they passed who just looked away and pretended they didn’t see anything. He’d thrown her in a tiny room attached to his office and it had been dark and hard and cold and she didn’t know how long that had been. Long enough that she thought she was dying from not having anything to drink, at least.

He’d let her out then, given her water and been nice again for a while. He’d said he was sorry, that he just wanted her to understand that everything she’d been taught was wrong and he’d overreacted - he’d be better if she just agreed with everything he said. And they’d gone back and forth like that for weeks until finally she’d broken down and couldn’t even cry anymore. She’d promised to be good, to think the way he told her to think. 

It was easy by then. She couldn’t even touch the Light, maybe it had rejected her, abandoned her like everyone else. He’d been kind to her after that, praising her skill with her lightsaber and helped her make a new one… she’d felt sick as he’d walked her through focusing all her anger from all her loss and pain into her bright green crystal until it bled.

**Author's Note:**

> Any timeline shenanigans are on me, I couldn't find precise dates for Asajj's life so I made them up.


End file.
